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Congressional responses to the prospect of women in the draft

I've been saying for quite a while that it is entirely likely that women between 18 and 26 years old will be required to register for the draft in the near future. I predict that this will happen either as a result of preemptive Congressional caving or as a result of SCOTUS meddling, based on earlier precedents. My recommendation in that case is that traditional young women follow the requirement to register (as most pacifists do) but at the same time prepare in an explicit way (and write on their registration card that they are so preparing) to apply for conscientious objector status on the basis of their sincere gender-role beliefs in the event that they are actually called up to be drafted.

In response to the rumblings in Washington about women and the draft, three different congressional responses have emerged. Herewith a brief discussion of each of them and a suggestion of a fourth response that should be on the table but for some reason isn't so far.

I will move quickly past Duncan Hunter's and Ryan Zinke's poison pill bill that actually requires women to register for the draft. Hunter and Zinke have been explicit that it is a poison pill. They claim that they are trying to get Congress to talk about women in combat, and they're clearly against women in combat. Well, why just talk? What is the goal? Is the goal to get Congress to get involved and take women out of combat? Why not make that the bill, then? If the goal is just to get Congress to shake a finger at the DoD about putting women in full combat, what good will that do? Not only does this law violate the principle of "Vulcans never bluff," it also has the potential to backfire, as I'm sure there are plenty of people in Congress who would vote for it. Just say what you mean and mean what you say, Reps. Hunter and Zinke. This is not a fruitful approach.

The next attempt is by Mike Lee. His proposed bill would (so reports tell us) explicitly reiterate that only men are required to register for the draft. It would also allegedly "assert that the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to legally define who is required to register with the Selective Service." Well, that's nice, but generally Congress doesn't just say, "Nyah, nyah, Supreme Court, you can't say anything about this" and expect the court to back off! Is Lee proposing language in the bill that would attempt to strip jurisdiction from all federal courts on this issue per Article I and Article III of the Constitution? Would that work? What say my con law geek readers?

Lee's bill is certainly worth considering and much better than nothing. If it would work to block women's being required to register for the draft, good for Lee, and I hope he succeeds. I would just note, however, that apparently the bill leaves untouched the issue of women in combat and continues to leave that up to the developing sensibilities of various DoD inhabitants. It also leaves in place the "unequal" requirement of men's registration for the draft. With women allowed in combat and men differentially required to register, the bill leaves in place the entire rationale that would otherwise be used by the courts to require women to register for the draft. Its success, therefore, depends entirely on the constitutional question of whether the bill can actually stop SCOTUS from interfering in this matter.

The third response has been the bipartisan introduction of a bill to eliminate draft registration for everyone. As a general matter of policy, this may be a perfectly fine idea. There is something rather odd about decade after decade in which young men are required under dire penalties to acquiesce in having their names put into a draft registration database, while everyone "just knows" that it would be tremendously unpopular actually to use that database and everyone counts on its not being used. It begins to look like invasion of privacy for its own sake--a kind of meaningless and outdated gesture.

As an approach to the potential of drafting women, this response has both good points and bad. It is certainly a simple fix for the time being to the problem of women and draft registration, since it eliminates draft registration for everyone. At that point, the court's involvement would become moot, since there would be no more facial inequality between the treatment of men and women in draft registration. It does not raise the constitutional questions raised by Mike Lee's bill. If it passed, it would certainly, for now, take care of the issue.

But I am concerned that it would merely push the problem aside for the time being while not in any way addressing the asymmetry between men and women. This isn't just a matter of symbolism. Right now I'm looking for practical suggestions, not for Congress to be a beacon of sanity on gender issues! But suppose that there were some circumstance in a couple of decades (or far less) in which everyone suddenly thought that we needed to reinstate the draft in a hurry. Our country does not think well in a hurry. (To put it mildly.) It seems to me plausible that under those circumstances, the gears of government would start spinning fast, the draft would suddenly be reinstated, and women would be swept up along with men. And don't tell me that that couldn't happen without the registration database in place. In the age of massive electronic record-keeping and massive federal power, it would be child's play for the federal government to find the relevant young people to draft. Moreover, if everyone had been told all along that "there is no draft anymore," women would not have been forewarned and even traditional women would not have developed the background I am suggesting to permit them to try to claim CO status in a crisis if they were actually drafted. In other words, as far as the issue of women and the draft, I worry that a law eliminating draft registration merely will postpone the evil day and meanwhile create a false sense of security. That doesn't mean, however, that I wouldn't welcome it or that I think it is a bad law, merely that I think it may not be sufficient to address this issue.

My own suggestion, which oddly enough no one seems to be trying, is that Congress take back into its own hands the issue of women in combat and that Congress officially remove women from direct combat. Mind you, that wouldn't address all the problems with women in the military by a long shot. As documented in Brian Mitchell's book, women's so-called "support" positions began to be redefined, standards were lowered, and feminism began to take over, as far back as the 1970's, and that process continued for a long time while allegedly women were "banned from combat." But baby steps, baby steps. For the time being, the immediate crisis is that women may be forced to register for the draft because the Obama DoD has decided to put women into all combat roles. This didn't used to be up to the DoD. Up until the 1990's, there were explicit laws on the books that prohibited women in full combat. In other words, it was up to Congress. These were repealed only in the early 1990's.

It would seem that Hunter, Zinke, Lee, Cruz, and all the other representatives and senators who want to do something about this should take the most direct route: Just ban women in combat at the congressional level. Return us to the status quo ante as it was before the 1990's changes.

The SCOTUS can choose to stick its nose in anywhere, given its history of lawlessness, but it has no direct precedents that would prevent this. SCOTUS never ruled that it was unconstitutional for Congress or the DoD to ban women in combat. What SCOTUS ruled was that it was constitutional to require only men to register for the draft because women were not allowed in combat. So prima facie, there is no SCOTUS ruling that would prevent Congress from taking that matter back into its own hands rather than leaving it to the vagaries of different administrations.

To my mind this would be the most obvious, straightforward, and effective way of preventing women from being required to register for the draft. Of course, the same law that bans women in combat can and should re-assert that only men are required to register for the draft. But the future success of such a law would not depend (or at least not so obviously as the success of Lee's bill) upon jurisdiction-stripping from the federal courts. Moreover, such a law would attempt to prevent the negative effects in the present of the bad plan to put women in full combat roles in the all-volunteer force.

I applaud the desire of Senator Lee and Representatives Zinke and Hunter to protect our daughters from the draft. I applaud Senator Cruz's forthright statements against the female draft. I suggest that the men in Congress who want to do something about this unite around a plan, and I think removing women from combat by congressional action is the best plan of all.

Comments (54)

That everyone but Cruz supported it is an indication that none of this will work. Even Cruz could not articulate a real reason other than a gut level opposition to seeing his daughters killed in battle. Unfortunately, that is not a rational reason why his daughters should exercise political rights without political duties.

The other candidates, I believe, have a mix of boys and girls. So how do they say to their sons, "boys, girls are your equals, but it's only natural in God's plan that your sisters get to stay home, make money, hang out at Starbucks, vote and run for office while you are getting shot at in a warzone against your preferences."

They know they can't. This is where conservatism has realize that you can have gender differences enshrined into the law or equality, but not both except to the extent that gender differences merely inform how equality is adjusted to different natures.

So conservatives can make a sound argument that it is imprudent to press women into national service via the military, but not a principled opposition to some form of conscription. In fact, I think the best way to take out many birds with one stone might be to enthusiastically embrace conscription for women, but in everything from industry, to taking out the trash. If women deliberately get pregnant to avoid it, charge them with the same punishment a man would get if he inflicts self-harm to avoid military service.

Mike, I have no regard for your suggestions. Women's conscription, even for non-combat positions, would involve taking married women with children away from their children, which is flat wrong. It could even mean (as has happened in the AVF) leaving the children effectively orphaned if their father is also military or also drafted.

As for "are your equals," that is obviously a vague phrase, as any articulate conservative (on matters of men and women) well knows. Equal human value is one thing. Sameness of role is another. Having a mix of boys and girls in one's family is no problem. I'm sure many of my local home schooled friends with a "mix of boys and girls" in their families would be perfectly happy to have their intelligent sons explain to you or anyone else why they and their sisters should be treated differently vis a vis getting shot at.

And I have enough confidence in Ted Cruz's intelligence that I wouldn't be surprised if he could explain all of that sort of thing as well (that men and women are equal in value but are not created *the same* and that this is relevant to whether women should be drafted into the military) but just didn't happen to do so at that particular time.

As for your silly suggestion to treat pregnancy as "self-harm," go pound sand. You and your dumb, extreme, often borderline misogynistic rhetoric are things I'm really not going to continue to treat with infinite patience. Some days I really wish you'd get offended and leave. Pregnancy, even if "self-inflicted," yes, even if "self-inflicted to avoid conscription," is not self-harm. The farther America goes from nature, the worse. Forcibly conscripting women and punishing them for pregnancy is vile and unnatural, and the only thing it would help to "kill" would not be policy "birds" but the last few sane brain cells left hanging around in our nation.

And I have enough confidence in Ted Cruz's intelligence that I wouldn't be surprised if he could explain all of that sort of thing as well (that men and women are equal in value but are not created *the same* and that this is relevant to whether women should be drafted into the military) but just didn't happen to do so at that particular time.

Let me try again...

Our society is liberal. All strains of liberalism embrace freedom and equality as the highest political virtues. No form of liberalism has a lock on what freedom and equality even mean. In liberal democracy, they are platitudes with little objective content except their most basic vernacular meaning at the most. That vernacular meaning on equality means fungibility in all matters of politics. Fungibility between men and women means there is no objective argument against women in the draft under the doctrines of liberalism. Therefore the only way out is a direct assault on liberal values at their very core.

The reason these proposals are doomed to fail is because they are a serious attempt to formally force liberalism to embrace an unprincipled exception that really strikes too close to the heart of what liberalism is. Since most conservatives are right-liberals, their very beliefs ultimately militate against those particular stands. They'll never feel easy precisely because they believe that in most roles men and women truly are fungible.

So don't get pissed at me for noticing that you are fighting against the prevailing cultural air of our society.

Forcibly conscripting women and punishing them for pregnancy is vile and unnatural

Society used to punish women all the time for having children outside of morally licit boundaries. If a woman joins the military and gets pregnant outside of military regulations then she is guilty of dereliction of her duties as a member of the armed forces. That is precisely one of the many reasons why women should not be in the military; too many of them actually do use pregnancy as a way to strategically duck out of the duties they agreed to in signing the contract.

too many of them actually do use pregnancy as a way to strategically duck out of the duties they agreed to in signing the contract.

But

In fact, I think the best way to take out many birds with one stone might be to enthusiastically embrace conscription for women, but in everything from industry, to taking out the trash. If women deliberately get pregnant to avoid it, charge them with the same punishment a man would get if he inflicts self-harm to avoid military service.

I don't see any agreed-upon contract here. I see a suggestion of forced conscription followed by punishment if pregnancy renders the woman unable to perform her duties. For that matter, I don't even see an exception for a married woman. Just "ram the equality down their throats, man, because those feminists deserve it," which is your usual shtick so not surprising.

And you can go on at length about how "all of society is liberal," blah, blah, but the fact is that we do now have two proposals and one poison pill law out there formally with the intent of stopping the female draft. I suggest a fourth proposal that is strongly in the spirit of Mike Lee's existing bill. I realize that neither Lee nor Cruz nor, for that matter, I may meet your oh-so-stringent standards for "not being a right liberal," but the fact remains that we all want to stop women's being drafted, qua women, and I'm virtually certain both of those guys are against women in combat. People are bothered about this, and I say, "Good for them," which is better than grousing about how they probably aren't as anti-feminist as I am or whatever. It's good that _some_ sanity is left in this country among some people, and I'm going to applaud it rather than slap it in the face. I'd rather unite with those guys to stop what is happening now and what is going to happen than spend time responding to your oddball kvetching about how "everybody is either a left liberal or a right liberal nowadays," etc., etc.

I don't see any agreed-upon contract here. I see a suggestion of forced conscription followed by punishment if pregnancy renders the woman unable to perform her duties. For that matter, I don't even see an exception for a married woman. Just "ram the equality down their throats, man, because those feminists deserve it," which is your usual shtick so not surprising.

And you can go on at length about how "all of society is liberal," blah, blah, but the fact is that we do now have two proposals and one poison pill law out there formally with the intent of stopping the female draft.

The contract is the social contract. Our society does not have any real faction that fundamentally dissents from the values of liberalism. That is why we are seeing all of our candidates embracing the female draft except Cruz, and only because it goes against his gut. He cannot articulate an actual reason why women should be exempt from some sort of national service in a time of war.

See here's the problem. Women can be exempt from service in the armed forces, but how is it morally just for a young woman, with no kids, to just go about her merry way, working, socializing, posting to Facebook, etc. when her male peers are being drafted into the armed forces? Do her political rights come with no duties to the body politic? Is she superior in rights to men that she is free to live as she pleases while men are ordered to the front or to face serious prison time?

Under the notion of political equality, there is no argument for a woman without children to maintain her full expectation of autonomy. Really, there is none. That is why I said you can debate how she can serve, but it is not a matter of whether she has a right to sit around and bake cookies or continue her career while men are deprived of their equivalent rights and forced to risk death in defense of society and the state.

You have your notion of what equality means, but the majority of society embraces equality in its more fundamental sense. That is not irrationality per se, as that is closer to what equality actually means! The very problem is the embracing of equality in a material and political sense rather than leaving equality to the Imago Dei.

The contract is the social contract. Our society does not have any real faction that fundamentally dissents from the values of liberalism.

Let me be explicit. For purposes of this topic, I DON'T CARE. I don't _need_ society to "fundamentally dissent from the values of liberalism." I don't care if opposition to women in the draft is what you call an "unprincipled exception." I call it a small remnant of sanity. Thus I think it's a good thing, and I want to make use of it in the sphere of policy. For the sake of my daughters and the daughters of a lot of good people. For the sake of men in the military, for the sake of not getting people killed, for the sake of having fewer lies told, for the sake of all kinds of things. The people who suggest such laws (which pace all your talk, they're already starting to do), who lobby their congressmen for them, etc., don't have to agree with me on everything, or on liberalism, or on the global meaning of equality, or on other areas of policy. I just want them to support a good law in this one area, and guess what? That could actually happen. Everything does not always have to be connected to everything else.

Oh, by the way, you keep talking like your universal national service in war time proposal would only apply to unmarried women without children, but in case you didn't notice, married men with children have always been called up for the draft. It happened as far as I know in every war. So if your proposal is some kind of "make men and women equal in civic duties in war time because our society is liberal at heart so it's only fair" (which is the most coherent take I can get on what you're on about this time), then

a) under the current situation, that's going to mean military service, which is bad for everybody,
b) regardless of a, that's going to mean taking women away from husbands and children, since it means taking men away from wives and children.

I think married women with children and even unwed mothers are much more easily defended on utilitarian grounds from the liberal assault. No one wants to force a bunch of kids on the state as wards in the name of equality. We can easily turn the unwed mothers into a game of "it's bad enough we have to subsidize them, now you want us to take over fully responsibility?" It's an argument that would appeal to the unbelievable selfishness of much of the left. [Great example of that, and they're all over the upper-middle class, influential left]

The real problem is not for daughters like yours, who is presumably traditional enough to make an effective case for why she'll never willingly make a good member of the armed forces, but the millions of women who cannot articulate any reason why they should be spared the consequences of equality. This is why focusing on liberalism, not the policy, matters. It's why all of the conservative half-assing on the sexual revolution hasn't stopped the gay rights movement and probably will be feckless if and when pedophiles start their march.

You want a real policy proposal? Do what some of the more sensible conservatives are doing and suggest we shut down the draft. It's a law that has never sat well with Anglo-American tradition and is obviously going to be used as a weapon against us by the left-liberals of various flavors. So make like it's a real culture war and burn the crops rather than let them fall into enemy hands to feed their troops, if you will.

On a different note of sorts, Dalrock has been covering the response from John Piper, the CBMW and a few others to these policies. Their views are, well, enlightening on what is so wrong with a large chunk of "conservatism." For instance, John Piper castigates us for sending women into combat, but refused to tell a woman who asked him if police work is compatible with womanhood that it was not right for women (ironically, police work is far more dangerous for women than most military service). The CBMW blames male cowardice for why women are being "forced to fight for us." Because, you see, not enough men are filling the ranks. Nope, can't blame female rebellion by non-conservative women. Hell, even the USMC is forcing women to fight for us even though all the way up to the command staff they've been digging in their heels in public.

So if your proposal is some kind of "make men and women equal in civic duties in war time because our society is liberal at heart so it's only fair" (which is the most coherent take I can get on what you're on about this time), then

I actually haven't been proposing anything here, except mainly that you are fighting against fundamental assumptions of our society and the zeitgeist at the same time. I think it's admirable to fight bad policies like this, but I think it's a lost cause because these policies are just symptoms, and I do think whatever victories we have are likely to be short lived unless we begin radical change to our assumptions about a great many things.

This is a culture war, and war requires sacrifice. It doesn't matter whether the draft might be good or not in theory. It has now become a liability. So if you are serious, demand we get rid of it. Cut it off. End the threat by ending the institution that is threatening us. Anything less is like leaving a huge storehouse of materiel while you retreat and praying to God the enemy doesn't find it because you refused to torch what you couldn't carry.

There's also another reason why we should end the draft. We live in an age in which girls are favored in school and the business world. A time when a woman can make the most defamatory rape accusation in public and face no legal liability for ruining a man's reputation, when the federal government even demands that functionally criminal proceedings be carried out without basic due process rights. Conservatives have a choice. Defending the draft for men while exempting women in this day and age makes us look like the other side. Ending the draft puts us on the right side of the narrative and gets us what we want for women at the same time. It's all up side for us compared to the alternatives.

In fact, I think the best way to take out many birds with one stone might be to enthusiastically embrace conscription for women, but in everything from industry, to taking out the trash.

Precisely where did I call for women to serve in the military at all. I patiently await you demonstrating to me that 2/3 of your comment is a response to what I actually wrote...

I actually haven't been proposing anything here,

Mike, DO stop being a jackass for just a moment and listen to what you're saying. Try to not contradict yourself.

This is why focusing on liberalism, not the policy, matters. It's why all of the conservative half-assing on the sexual revolution hasn't stopped the gay rights movement

except mainly that you are fighting against fundamental assumptions of our society and the zeitgeist at the same time. I think it's admirable to fight bad policies like this, but I think it's a lost cause because these policies are just symptoms, and I do think whatever victories we have are likely to be short lived unless we begin radical change to our assumptions about a great many things.

Where does Lydia prescribe that we should NOT try to correct the underlying defects (including the liberal infection) along with trying to beat a bad policy before it actually becomes policy? Nowhere. There is NO LOGIC to what you are saying, Mike. If we are going to win the culture war by taking liberalism out of the picture, we are going to do it over time, not all in a single day. But part of the process consists in making sure that the liberals stop infecting new people left and right, which includes standing up for sanity in places that help inform people's minds and consciences. Like keeping women out of the military and combat (and police departments). There is nothing wrong with getting rid of the draft registration AND passing a law that says women cannot serve in combat. The latter would be standing law if we ever have to bring back the draft for a war, as well as helping, as one piece of the cultural mosaic, to form young women into understanding combat is not for them.

"boys, girls are your equals, but it's only natural in God's plan that your sisters get to stay home, make money, hang out at Starbucks, vote and run for office while you are getting shot at in a warzone against your preferences."

Women can be exempt from service in the armed forces, but how is it morally just for a young woman, with no kids, to just go about her merry way, working, socializing, posting to Facebook, etc. when her male peers are being drafted into the armed forces?

That is why I said you can debate how she can serve, but it is not a matter of whether she has a right to sit around and bake cookies or continue her career while men are deprived of their equivalent rights and forced to risk death in defense of society and the state.

Mike, you seem to have a real bug up your behind about women getting to "stay behind" and make cookies and do facebook and drink coffee while men get shot at, women don't have to "pay the price" of their freedom and equality, and that this is how liberalism is an infection. That's just a bunch of codswallop. Pure malarkey.

Women and men always have different duties and different aspects of freedom. But making it out as if "putting your life on the line" is the only coin in which one can possibly buy political rights (such as having the vote) has NEVER been an American standard. For example, in the Revolution, men had to serve whether they had the vote or not. At the time, you had to have significant property to have the franchise. But you didn't have to have property to be required to serve in war. Secondly, men who are physically unable to serve have never had the franchise withheld on that account - they have always had the right to vote (if they had sufficient property) and hold office even if they could not serve. Thirdly, men who never needed to serve because at the time the country wasn't at war, and men who were not called in WWII because they had had too many dependents (more than one third otherwise eligible), still had full 'autonomy' and stayed at home drinking coffee and making bucks while their confreres were shot at for lousy pay.

While it is true that women ought to be responsible for their rights and freedoms in the proper manner, and ought to have the rights and freedoms proper to womenhood, that simply does not imply that only serving in the military can justify having the right to vote or hold office. It is, further, just plain crazy to suggest that "staying home" constitutes some kind of special benefit. It's just what we want of our women, (whether they want to or not) and whether they use it well or not is a separate question from whether that's where they belong.

The true question is not whether women have properly 'paid for' their privileges by serving in the military, but whether their being in the military is good for the purposes of the military and good for the nation. It certainly isn't good for the military (which is known but denied), and in a healthy society we would know it isn't good for the nation. But we can push toward a more sane society by passing a law that prohibits women serving in combat, and prohibits drafting women.

Mike, DO stop being a jackass for just a moment and listen to what you're saying. Try to not contradict yourself.

Me saying that I think conscription into civilian service could be a good alternative in one particular comment while the rest focus on the fundamental problems of these proposals does not constitute much of a trend of proposing anything here. It's closer to a throw away statement than anything else.

Now, what you and Lydia seem hell bent on ignoring is that the cultural air and zeitgeist do matter. They will defeat you because you are arguing against the logic your society has fully embraced. Without Scalia, you can rest absolutely certain that a future Supreme Court will strike down any policy proposal aimed at foiling egalitarianism under the same logic used against Jim Crow and other unprincipled exceptions.

Citing history is not relevant. No one but you and a minority of social conservatives cares what a previous generation of liberals did because this generation of liberals embraces equality in its purer conceptual form. That is what you are actually fighting, and there is no logic to "separate but equal" for men and women in this context.

That is why I say that ending the draft is the only proposal that can work because it is the only thing the bureaucrats and courts cannot overcome. The Supreme Court cannot force the draft to be reenacted. If it did, Congress could impeach the whole lot of them and even most democrats would probably support it due to demands from their constituents (to their credit, liberals tend to hate the draft).

Thirdly, men who never needed to serve because at the time the country wasn't at war, and men who were not called in WWII because they had had too many dependents (more than one third otherwise eligible), still had full 'autonomy' and stayed at home drinking coffee and making bucks while their confreres were shot at for lousy pay

But those men are different from single, childless women. They have responsibilities or valid reasons the military would not take them. The military generally did not pass over healthy, capable young men without children.

You and Lydia seem to forget that this is a culture war and so the signals you send do matter. You cannot propose a restriction on female participation in the draft at a time when leftists are successfully imposing a virulently anti-male academic, business and legal environment and come away unscathed. I know both of you disagree with those things, so let's not beat that horse. Suffice it to say, what the men outside the choir see is conservatives lining up to just add one more way society gives women all the breaks and no duties to go with them. Long term, that does not draw people to our side.

There are plenty of ways childless women could be forced to perform national service without being sent into the military. They could be drafted to work at government rates in the production of materiel. Technically trained ones could be forced to work in the civil service taking over jobs that men can't do anymore because they're at war.

What you have not done is articulated why childless women, who are mentally and physically fit to sacrifice for their country, should be free from mandatory duties while in all other areas we embrace equality. I don't think you really can articulate it without articulating something across the board for men and women alike.

Ahh, THAT explains it. You forgot to add "civilian" in your comment, and it looked like you were including military service as well. Which is why we didn't take it as a throwaway comment.

They will defeat you because you are arguing against the logic your society has fully embraced.

But people aren't logical, as you just told us on the Trump site. People are swayed by emotion, rhetoric is at least as important as presenting a solid case for the issue (if not more). Well, we still have an opportunity here: people STILL don't want their daughters drafted, even if that IS ILLOGICAL with respect to the zeitgeist. They just don't. So we use that. Logic be damned in terms of consistency with the rest of what they want, the selfish blighters.

Citing history is not relevant. No one but you and a minority of social conservatives cares what a previous generation of liberals did because this generation of liberals embraces equality in its purer conceptual form.

I wasn't citing history to them, I was citing it to you. Don't you care about the historical roots of America?

But those men are different from single, childless women. They have responsibilities or valid reasons the military would not take them.

and there is no logic to "separate but equal" for men and women in this context.

"Valid reason"? Logic? There you go again! I am not aiming to make it a logical argument with liberals (and their captive non-thinkers), I aim to make it a tug on their emotions. For those who have swallowed the poison fully, "reasoning" with them won't work on this issue, so don't bother. To the conservatives, of course, who haven't swallowed "equality", a different argument is available. We don't need to confuse "how we present the issue" with "the underlying truth of the matter".

You and Lydia seem to forget that this is a culture war and so the signals you send do matter.

So we send different arguments to liberals and to conservatives. To conservatives we explain this is a camel nose in the tent tactic to PUSH BACK on "equality" as the cultural god. Hey, can't stand the fact that they won't treat women as WOMEN? Well get them to swallow THIS little bit, and later you can show them how illogical their "equality" rant is...

What you have not done is articulated why childless women, who are mentally and physically fit to sacrifice for their country, should be free from mandatory duties while in all other areas we embrace equality. I don't think you really can articulate it without articulating something across the board for men and women alike.

C'mon, Mike, you're beating a horse that has been dead for ages and is now decomposed into a heap of slime. At this site we have frequently articulated reasons why women should not be in the military, and that there should be many other ways in which men and women are treated as if they were the same. It is true that within the culture, starting with liberal assumptions, the case cannot be made logically. The elites want "full equality" (meaning _same_) for the non-elites (not for them, ooooohhhh no), and with their assumptions that should imply same treatment in the military. In the long run, we won't overturn this while accepting the liberal assumptions.

But Lydia and I reject those assumptions, of course. Don't confuse what is fundamentally TRUE with passing a law as a tactic. When you get down to it, we aren't arguing "full 'equality' (i.e. sameness)...except in the military". We are arguing against treating men and women the same in all ways that their real differences matter to society and culture. What we have articulated is a position of treating men as men and women as women - i.e. differently - based on a principled stance that men and women complement each other to form a complete social structure. And that the liberal notion of equality is a deformation (or rejection) of the truth of that complementarity. And that the liberal notion of 'freedom' is, also, damaged goods: true freedom integrates our actual human natures - created male and female - with our ends as rational beings, to form a hierarchical structure of goods. A structure that implies a distinct ordering of roles and tasks and responsibilities between men and women.

In the long run, we don't expect to maintain a rule against women in combat without achieving any success in undermining the false liberal positions on equality and freedom. But society moves in fits and starts, dribbles and drabbles here and there, forward two steps on one front, backwards a step on another front, it isn't uniform. And we would take advantage of that: people aren't emotionally wedded to women in combat (yet) and we would keep it that way if possible, as one piece of the overall battle. It is a chink in the logic of the liberals, which could be turned against them with the right tactics.

Look, I am not at all confident that Lydia's proposal can be passed in Congress. Sure as hell unlikely to get signed by Obama. So it's still a poltical maneuvering minefield - which is exactly why Hunter & Zinke's poison pill bill was proposed, as maneuvering.

Ideally, we could pass a constitutional amendment that puts paid to the matter, but that's extremely unlikely. Short of that, we can pass laws. Now, any laws that Congress passes, the SC can unravel (or at least say that), so on a second level, ideally along with Congress saying "no women in combat" they should also pass a law that take the issue out of the jurisdiction of the courts, including (explicitly) the Supremes. Will that work to keep the SC out of it? Well, it's not certain that it would, of course, but it's not certain that it wouldn't, either. For one thing, the STANDARD pathway to the SC is through the district and appeals layers, and if you can't even involve them, you don't have a normal pathway to getting a "case" in front of the SC. Alternatively, (if things were right in this world), both Congress and the President ought to threaten the SC with the due and proper constitutional punishments for failing to stay within their own boundaries: impeachment (by Congress), and refusing to comply by the President and his executive arm. "You want women in the combat? Well, I won't empower any of my military officials to effect that (and I am Commander in Chief), nor will I enable any civil service officials in the government to spend any time, effort, or money on pursuing that". So stuff it, morons.

Eventually, unless it comes to actual physical civil warfare, Congress and the President are going to have to stand up to the SC about something and say NO. Who knows what it will be? No harm in creating a good test case that serve the purpose.

Liberalism is a funny thing. It is both logical and illogical. It is almost sublime in its incoherence and ability to be whatever people want it to be. That is why I speak of logic and emotionalism at the same time with respect to it.

I don't think the number of people who want to keep women out of combat, let alone the draft is that high. It is probably not that high either among the people willing to fight in Congress. The fact that only Cruz half-assedly articulated opposition, while the rest embraced it should tell you where you stand beyond a large chunk of the electorate. Even if you get the public behind you, odds are low that you'd find enough politicians who'd act on the popular sentiment.

Even if you got that, you have to face the Supreme Court and without Scalia, you are almost certain to lose because as our society understands equality there is no rational argument for exempting childless women from national service. The best you could get is the liberals agreeing that drafting women is legal, but drafting them specifically into military service versus compulsory civilian service is congressional prerogative under its authority to regulate the armed forces. However, I think a blanket privileging of such women from any compulsory service would be annihilated even by most of the conservatives under their reading of the 14th amendment, as it would amount to a separate-but-equal class of law.

Under the logic of liberalism, it should not stand. If fathers with dependent wives must go to the military, then there is no excuse for a childless young woman to not be told by force of law that she must report to the nearest federal office for civilian duty assignment. Doesn't matter whether it's janitorial work or something better. Equality in rights demands an equality, even if a complementary one, in duties.

What I see is a split among conservatives. A great many fervently believe in equality, except on issues like this. Their sons have to "man up" and sacrifice, but they'd never want their daughter drafted into even picking up the garbage for a poor town because the normal trash collectors got sent to war. Other conservatives are realizing that we either need to end the draft or rethink some of the liberal (yes, even "classical liberal") values we've held on some of these things.

But people aren't logical, as you just told us on the Trump site. People are swayed by emotion, rhetoric is at least as important as presenting a solid case for the issue (if not more). Well, we still have an opportunity here: people STILL don't want their daughters drafted, even if that IS ILLOGICAL with respect to the zeitgeist. They just don't. So we use that. Logic be damned in terms of consistency with the rest of what they want, the selfish blighters.

"Valid reason"? Logic? There you go again! I am not aiming to make it a logical argument with liberals (and their captive non-thinkers), I aim to make it a tug on their emotions. For those who have swallowed the poison fully, "reasoning" with them won't work on this issue, so don't bother. To the conservatives, of course, who haven't swallowed "equality", a different argument is available. We don't need to confuse "how we present the issue" with "the underlying truth of the matter".

There are two ways we can play their emotions. We can either try this gentle legislative approach or an approach that scars the national psyche on the issue and makes the policy politically untenable to such an extent that even drafting the law is politically non-viable or even career suicide. I prefer the latter because it is far less likely to result in tens of thousands of unwilling female casualties. The easiest and most sound way to achieve permanent emotional rejection of the issue is to let the current batch of volunteers get their hearts' desires, go into combat with ISIS and get a dose of what the world really thinks about equality good and hard. Why? Because these are feminist lunatics, not your daughters or many moderate women who aren't keen on going into the military. They are the ones who think GI Jane was half documentary, half fiction. If they want to make our case for us, by all means let them.

You may want to save such women from themselves, but you can't anymore than we can stop meth addicts from becoming what they are despite all of the popular knowledge of what meth does to users. Everyone in their gut knows what will happen, but no one wants to say it. So you have a choice, and a hard one. You can let these people hell-bent on ideology-assisted suicide demonstrate to millions of impressionable women why it's folly or you can coercively save them from themselves and lose a teachable moment that might save huge numbers of lives.

If I were the Evil Conservative Puppetmaster (the Kochs already occupy that job, they say), I would get tea partiers in Congress to propose a bill to abolish the draft and increase the funding and incentives for the National Guard. That cuts that problem off dead in its track without harming the rights of men either. I would then propose a new regulation for the armed forces that requires gender parity in all requirements for military occupational skills. It would open all positions to women, but require that women be absolutely fungible in ability with their male counterparts. It would, in effect, destroy the issue because it would give the military cover to resist lowering standards for women because that would be formally illegal by act of Congress. Any order given to them would have to explicitly lower the bar for men, which would mean the President would be under fire for letting fat, out of shape men join Army special forces and the USMC.

Considering that in my main post I was quite friendly to the idea of abolishing draft registration altogether and that my only comment was that it is insufficient fully to address the danger that women will, without warning, be drafted later in some sort of hasty reinstatement of the draft, it should be obvious that I'm hardly hostile to the idea of abolishing the draft!

In which case, Mike, you would sound like less of an irritating commentator for the sake of being irritating if you had spared us the lengthy disquisitions on how we're somehow missing the boat and not understanding the liberalism in America, saved us the semi-bitter defense of universal national service for the unmarried, and just said that of the options mentioned in my main post you favor the option of abolishing the draft altogether.

As for your national service proposal, I see no particular argument for giving government that kind of power over all of our young people. Nor is it at all clear to me that the federal government is the best decider of where anyone (male or female) can best serve in a _civilian_ capacity in war time. To my mind that's like saying that in war time suddenly a more socialist, centrally managed economy in which the government assigns every unmarried person between 18-26 a job is a good idea because...reasons. Because people have to pay for being citizens. Because [insert vague language about fairness and patriotism and citizenship here]. It's dumb. It's totalitarian in spirit and unlikely to be good for the country in practice. The fewer people swept up into such a scheme, the better. And, as Tony has pointed out, it shows a kind of childish, bitter resentment towards people's freedom to live normal lives and serve God, their country, and their fellow man in ways that they choose rather than being semi-enslaved by the federal government just because it's war. *If* there is a rationale for drafting unwilling men for the military (on the grounds that it's an emergency and we need people to fight), it's *extremely* difficult to extend that same rationale to the entire young, civilian labor force. And since women should _not_ be drafted into the military, yeah, that leaves an asymmetry between men and women in such emergency situations. So what? I don't believe that men and women are the same anyway, so I'm not going to gerrymander some national service scheme just to make everything look more "fair."

Besides which, I'm a tad weary of your unending lecturing that we "don't get" this or that combined with your casual assumption that married women and/or women with children would be easy to exempt from such a scheme. The fact of the matter is that you just want to tell us we're wrong about something, we don't get where our country is at, blah, blah, but you want to dream up a scheme that looks more "fair" to you and your Men's Rights buddies than the male-only draft and that you think looks like it's somehow more realistically tied to "where the country is at," but at the same time you want to tweak it around the edges so that it doesn't amount to dragging a married mother away from her toddler to stand in a factory making munitions all day long while her kids are forced into daycare. Because obviously it's more "civic" of her to do that than to take care of her own children, which doesn't count as fulfillment of civic duty. Maybe _that's_ where the country is at--or would be if such a scheme were put into place.

So I prefer to advocate policies that I actually think are _good policies_ rather than playing weird mind games.

I would get tea partiers in Congress to propose a bill to abolish the draft

How long do you think we are going to go before we get into a war where we need the draft again, and Congress will simply bring it back? What's to prevent THAT draft from taking women? Do you have a notion that by abolishing the draft now and increasing the National Guard and requiring strict gender parity you will have achieved a consensus not to draft women by that time?

By the way, I am totally on board with strengthening the National Guard, or better yet state military entities (i.e. militias), and as long as we have women in the military we ought to demand strict parity anyway. And I have no problem abolishing the draft registration when there is no immediate prospect of war, it is an old-fashioned solution anyway (as you said). It's just that I wouldn't stop with those.

I don't think the number of people who want to keep women out of combat, let alone the draft is that high.

I see it differently. When you pose the issue the wrong way (about "what's fair" in an amorphous generic way), you get one answer, and yes probably a good 70% want military service to be 'fair' and then that can be manipulated into "most" people want equality. But when you pose the question the right way, (say, asking "what's fair" about requiring less of women than of men when a soldier's life is on the line), a good deal more don't want women in combat if they can't meet the same tests as men. You're right about there being a seething underlayer of rage about the hoity-toity elite imposing that particular crazy two-step on us. If you expand the point to consider the draft, there is again a sheeply sort of readiness to be led in _either_ direction: sure, (they say) women ought to be subject to the same service requirements as men. But then if you point out that if we applied (for example) the height and weight and physical condition standards as were used in WWII, it would mean that something like 80% of men are eligible to be drafted, but only 40% of women...so where is the "fairness" of a draft that doesn't land equally on men and women? There are lots of ordinary people who would object to that kind of "equality" - and they couldn't give a fig if that's the "logic" of liberalism.

Similarly, I think that there are a lot of people who are "willing" to see women in combat in a generic, amorphous "them" sort of way, and damn-all opposed to it when it's their own daughters and nieces at stake. These people are snookered by liberalism in many ways, but they aren't logical and they do emotionally rebel at the idea of their own daughters in combat in a way distinct from how they react to their sons being in combat. Sure, that's two-faced of them, but that's reality: people are ambivalent about it. So, there is a broad majority in some sense in favor of women being drafted, and also a broad majority in another sense opposed to it.

Besides which, I'm a tad weary of your unending lecturing that we "don't get" this or that combined with your casual assumption that married women and/or women with children would be easy to exempt from such a scheme. The fact of the matter is that you just want to tell us we're wrong about something, we don't get where our country is at, blah, blah, but you want to dream up a scheme that looks more "fair" to you and your Men's Rights buddies than the male-only draft and that you think looks like it's somehow more realistically tied to "where the country is at," but at the same time you want to tweak it around the edges so that it doesn't amount to dragging a married mother away from her toddler to stand in a factory making munitions all day long while her kids are forced into daycare. Because obviously it's more "civic" of her to do that than to take care of her own children, which doesn't count as fulfillment of civic duty. Maybe _that's_ where the country is at--or would be if such a scheme were put into place.

What I think you don't factor into your ideas here is the environment people outside of the Christian community are living in. The left has succeeded in creating a very "pro-woman" system in academia, business and government at the direct expense of men. You probably know many of the examples the Obama administration and others have pushed, so let's leave it at that.

I see the drive to protect women from the draft as occurring within that context. I think objectively it's a good idea, but it's not strategic thinking to protect women from the draft because they're women, at least not overtly. It just paints you as a fellow traveler of the people leveling men's basic legal rights, like due process rights.

As for your point about mothers, yes I do think we can protect them by combining a variety of good arguments that don't obviously fly in the face of liberal values. Utilitarian, financial, the good of the children who'd have to be stuck with outsiders. Lots of fertile ground there. The link I provided shows how supremely selfish these people are. They can be played like an instrument in the hands of a virtuoso if you start them down the path that they're going to waste vast amounts of tax money needlessly by making those women work.

How long do you think we are going to go before we get into a war where we need the draft again, and Congress will simply bring it back? What's to prevent THAT draft from taking women? Do you have a notion that by abolishing the draft now and increasing the National Guard and requiring strict gender parity you will have achieved a consensus not to draft women by that time?

The bigger question, I think, is if we get to that war will we have time to make a draft good for anything? That's quite possibly a no. The process of building modern materiel is significantly harder than it was in WWII. A modern warship is significantly more complicated than the ships we churned out by the hundreds per year. Modern jets costs significantly more. Odds are quite good that if we get to that point, we'll already be signing a peace treaty under our terms of surrender if we're not lucky.

Though anything could happen, which is why we should be focusing on military readiness over the draft. Conservatives should take a mildly libertarian stance here. Cut the draft, increase the incentives and use the military better. We just dropped several tens of thousands of troops to "cut costs" without any comparable cuts in the civil service. Conservatives should be hammering the opposition on how wasteful that is since uniformed members of the armed forces are cheaper and just as good as civilians.

I think objectively it's a good idea, but it's not strategic thinking to protect women from the draft because they're women, at least not overtly. It just paints you as a fellow traveler of the people leveling men's basic legal rights, like due process rights.

Once again, I don't care how it "paints" me. I say what is true. And I want Congress to act (as much as possible) on the basis of what is true. I won't argue at any length about how many people there are out there motivated by the kind of male resentment you are evidently telling me not to "trigger." In general, I think people on the fringes overestimate the political importance of their own interest group. For example, I know someone who keeps talking on and on about whether or not some Republican candidate can "get the paleoconservative vote," as if the Republican nomination hangs on the "paleoconservative vote." Which, I'm sorry, is flat false. Similarly, given the web sites you hang out at, I strongly suspect that you overestimate the number of voters, lobbyists, etc., who are going to be effective at scotching a plan because they view it as anti-male.

I do think women should be exempted from the draft because they are women, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise. If some bitter men's rights guy is mad at me for that, too bad, so sad. I'm sure he and I wouldn't have all that much in common anyway, and I don't think such a person has the ear of Mike Lee and Ted Cruz or other Congressional bill sponsors anyway. But it's pretty obvious that either these guys themselves or someone who has their ear _does_ think that women should be exempted from the draft because they are women. (They are saying so themselves.) So I applaud that and want to see it applied most effectively.

The bigger question, I think, is if we get to that war will we have time to make a draft good for anything? That's quite possibly a no. The process of building modern materiel is significantly harder than it was in WWII. A modern warship is significantly more complicated than the ships we churned out by the hundreds per year. Modern jets costs significantly more. Odds are quite good that if we get to that point, we'll already be signing a peace treaty under our terms of surrender if we're not lucky.

Wow. That's an eye-opener. We should get rid of the draft registration. But if we ever needed a lot of extra people in the military quickly, we won't be able to do it in a hurry and we'll sign a peace treaty before we accept temporary losses during a ramp-up to bigger forces.

We currently have trouble getting enough qualified people to volunteer for the military as it is. If (as you clearly imply) we actually need LOTS MORE people in the military, then maybe we need to draft right now and beef up our forces. Because that's the only way we can have the people on hand when we need them, and won't have to sign a peace treaty merely because we don't have the manpower. Forget the mere registration for the draft, we actually need to draft people and fill the ranks.

Or something. There are some scenarios where a draft will do us no good, so there's no point in considering it for ANY situation? What the hell?

Either that, or there remain at least some scenarios where a future draft would help us. And if so, then the question also remains: what is to prevent THAT Congress from drafting women? All you did is avoid the question.

I don't think we need a draft at all. We just let go a few tens of thousands of troops to "save costs." Congress could reverse that in peace time by authorizing a much larger recruitment target and offering to give those cut their positions back (if possible) or additional reenlistment bonus money to cover the harm done by sequestration.

There are probably four main types of wars we could face:

1. 4GW guerrilla battles in the third world.
2. Larger scale police actions.
3. A war on the level of Vietnam or Korea over a disputed territory (Baltic states, Ukraine, Syria)
4. A full scale world war that probably ends with a lot of our military killed by Russian or Chinese tactical nuclear weapons and vice versa.

If our cities get hit with WMDs it will probably be a terrorist group or rogue state. The most likely scenario with a rogue state is Iran and them using it as an EMP, not to directly kill a few million people.

Either that, or there remain at least some scenarios where a future draft would help us. And if so, then the question also remains: what is to prevent THAT Congress from drafting women? All you did is avoid the question.

I didn't avoid that question because everyone knows that no Congress can bind a future Congress except by a constitutional amendment. There are also, frankly, far bigger national concerns than a female draft when it comes to an amendment debate. Roe v. Wade comes to mind. Compared to that atrocity, the female draft doesn't deserve a constitutional convention's consideration.

Whatevs. The idea that that particular jibe would move me is pretty strange.

You still seem surprised at times that I am closer to Trump than the average American in my capacity to be shamed.

By the way, I want to clear something up about how we started here. I was not making comments about what SHOULD be done, but addressing how these proposals interact with liberalism and how politicians that fully embrace liberalism would react to them.

Yes, it is true that men and women are different. Most of what you've said is not controversial at all to me. However, the point about sons versus daughters is very relevant to liberalism. A liberal of any sort looks at his sons and daughters and sees equals. His gut may say "keep my little girls out of the military," but his mind and instincts say why should his little boys be forced to risk death in a war zone while his daughters exercise the same rights back home with none of the sacrifice. Even worse, they will tell him that it is infringing on his daughters' liberty to not let them go off or to even force them to not accept the same type of responsibility.

Gender differences are not relevant in liberalism except as a barrier to be overcome. That is the natural, logical outcome of liberalism. It is intrinsically hostile to gender differences and roles because liberalism is hostile to all natural barriers to total freedom and equality. So the real issue is how you can ever long force an unprincipled exception, in law, on liberalism. The force of liberal logic, within a liberal society, will overcome it eventually just as segregation was overcome (in that case, forced segregation was immoral, but it was also an unprincipled exception to freedom and equality).

This is why I say that literally the only likely route to victory is the abolition of the draft. It does not matter what people think today because a simple extrapolation of historic patterns suggests it will be less controversial within another generation and not at all within two. If you disagree, then pick any other area where liberalism has evolved from race, to sexual practices, to attitudes on authority and tell me it does not apply there.

Social conservatives aren't willing to start really challenging liberalism for a variety of reasons, one of which is that most of us are liberals to one degree or another. I am too, just not nearly as much as I ways even a year ago. So if you want minimize the damage, you have to outwit liberalism at its own game. That is why I support ending the draft and creating a requirement of absolute equality between the genders on military standards. That gives us room to pretend it's about equality, when it's really not and force the majority to go our way for reasons they won't fully understand.

We could even go so far as to court martial male servicemen who prioritize saving women over men in battle. Would it be fair? Not entirely, but it would make more men hostile to the idea of women in combat and make women feel less comfortable about choosing that route. If you just forthrightly state opposition to women in combat, you won't get as far as going a more subtle route.

And another thing, let's talk about social conservatives and priorities of morality. Matt Walsh comes to mind. The man all but said he'd renounce his citizenship if his little girl got drafted. Curiously, he is not at all so militant about the industrial slaughter of the unborn by his society. This is a truly disordered moral priority, and I know he's not alone, not by a long shot.

I'm fine with ending the draft. I've already said, two or three times, why I think it may not be enough to address the problem of women being drafted. So I won't type it out again.

As for "creating a requirement of absolute equality between the genders on military standards," I have been watching the trainwreck of women in the military for over three decades, and unicorns will shower gold and pixie dust on flying, fluffy bunnies before the military both integrates women in some area and applies identical standards to men and women. The military culture of making double standards for women so it can announce their progress and even, beyond the explicit double standards, outright hiding and lying about their failures to meet male standards is maximally ingrained and has been carefully cultivated at all levels from the Carter administration to the present. If you want to talk about an unrealistic goal that you might as well not bother proposing, *that* counts in spades. The *only* way to avoid having that spread into ground combat is not to have women in ground combat.

It's also typical of your crazy ideas to suggest court martialing men who act chivalrously in battle. I won't even dignify it with a long response.

It's also typical of your warped tendency to criticize people whom you should be agreeing with that your last paragraph would give someone who didn't know better the impression that Matt Walsh, of all people, is lukewarm about the abortion issue. Just because he hasn't said he'll renounce his citizenship over it. Or something. You are always looking out for reasons to criticize conservatives who are _real_ conservatives, often on the very issues where you are criticizing them. This is absurd. Anyone who reads Walsh knows exactly where he's coming from concerning the slaughter of the unborn.

It's also typical of your crazy ideas to suggest court martialing men who act chivalrously in battle. I won't even dignify it with a long response.

That's not chivalry in any sense that actual chevaliers would recognize it, and I think you know that.

The military culture of making double standards for women so it can announce their progress and even, beyond the explicit double standards, outright hiding and lying about their failures to meet male standards is maximally ingrained and has been carefully cultivated at all levels from the Carter administration to the present. If you want to talk about an unrealistic goal that you might as well not bother proposing, *that* counts in spades. The *only* way to avoid having that spread into ground combat is not to have women in ground combat.

No, it's not. A ban on women in combat will almost assuredly be ruled unconstitutional within 15 years by some future more left-leaning court. As liberalism advances, increasingly radical equality demands it women in combat. So you have a choice. You can force liberalism by law to either lower the standards for men or raise the standards of women in the name of equality. Every good liberal says if a woman can meet the standards, let her in. That is the current you are going against. It is what every candidate but Cruz said, and look at the numbers. Cruz is in 3rd place now.

It is now legal to discriminate. You can make it illegal. It is also an illegality that will be upheld by a leftist court because it jives perfectly with liberal logic. That provides the President with the authority to replace officers who won't follow the law. It also provides the President and SecDef the authority to prosecute officers who disobey the law.

It's also typical of your warped tendency to criticize people whom you should be agreeing with that your last paragraph would give someone who didn't know better the impression that Matt Walsh, of all people, is lukewarm about the abortion issue. Just because he hasn't said he'll renounce his citizenship over it. Or something. You are always looking out for reasons to criticize conservatives who are _real_ conservatives, often on the very issues where you are criticizing them. This is absurd. Anyone who reads Walsh knows exactly where he's coming from concerning the slaughter of the unborn.

Right, because it makes total sense to say that his daughter getting drafted is a moral crime even within the same continent as the ballpark in which abortion resides.

Drafting women is likely to result in more men in combat arms anyway. Conservatives aren't even looking at this rationally. Most women will score well enough on the ASVAB that the military will have the flexibility to put them out of combat arms and put men with the same scores in combat arms. If you have two 80th percentile scorers, one male and one female, and one combat arms and one support position, to assign between them what would you pick? You'd put the man in combat arms because you don't need him in that support position. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the military will suddenly discover that feminists were right and women are smarter than men so it can put all but a minority of women into support positions to avoid completely FUBARing the war fighters in the field.

Right, because it makes total sense to say that his daughter getting drafted is a moral crime even within the same continent as the ballpark in which abortion resides.

Sigh. It should not be necessary to say this. I'm sure Walsh could explain this to you if he wanted to bother: Presumably he's making the statements he's making about drafting his daughter because he's trying to figure out how to protect his daughter, which is his personal responsibility. Not because he's making any kind of moral equivalence claim regarding the two issues. This is obvious to anyone who reads what Walsh writes about abortion.

As far as trying to require (really, _this_ time, we _mean_ it!) men and women to abide by exactly the same physical standards, one reason that liberals will never, ever let that happen is because it would pretty much dismantle the co-ed military across the board, including in support positions. Requiring the same upper-body strength, the same number of chin-ups, carrying the same amount of weight, etc., etc., would mean a transformation of the military and would be "regressive" (by their lights) by decades. They will never allow that to happen. Moving women into combat is seen is the logical _follow-up_ to and _continuation_ of the supposed "progress" women have made in the military heretofore. Nobody is going to simultaneously rule that women have to be allowed in combat while taking all of that away with the other hand by imposing physical standards that will take all women except mutant aliens not only out of combat but also out of the majority of support roles. If such a law were passed, it would never be applied, and its very existence would therefore just mean more lies while meanwhile the man on the street goes on his merry way believing that "we took care of that" by law and that apparently women really _are_ meeting identical physical standards to men. There's enough foolish confusion and disinformation going around on that topic already, and I would never be a party to increasing it.

As for strategies to move women out of combat by giving them more cerebral roles, as your last comment suggests, the extent to which those kinds of strategies are allowed will vary, as such things always have varied, with the administration and who is in charge. Probably such strategies to try partially to counteract the bad effects of allowing women in combat will be allowed in some years and then ferreted out and put a stop to in other years. It's all just more game playing such as we've had all along, only on a new level and in a new area. The relatively more sensible people try to find a way around the insane requirements and may be able to figure out some kind of suboptimal kludge until and unless they are stopped from using it.

As for strategies to move women out of combat by giving them more cerebral roles, as your last comment suggests, the extent to which those kinds of strategies are allowed will vary, as such things always have varied, with the administration and who is in charge.

That last comment was not intended as a mitigation of the female draft, but to point out how it will most likely go down in practice. Since women just are physically unsuited for a lot of positions, but test in a "good enough for government work" sort of way for many others, it'd be totally natural for men to be shoved out of those slots and into combat arms unless the men are essential personnel like one of the only people in a support unit who has made a career of it for a long time.

In fact, I fully expect that if there is a draft involving women, that you will see many conservatives supporting such a plan as a way to minimize female casualties and "let men do what they do best" while keeping things segregated by gender as much as possible.

What Walsh said:

And, at that point, we’ll deserve our fate. Are we even worth defending if it means sending our daughters off to die? Well, maybe sending your daughter, anyway. Mine will not be sent anywhere. My daughter will not sign up for the draft, no matter what the government says. If this becomes law, I will break the law and do so proudly. I will not allow my daughter to be a part of this national disgrace, and if that means we must leave the United States altogether — good riddance. I honestly do not want to live in a country that uses its women as human shields.

Some of that is certainly fatherly protectiveness which is a virtue. However, I cannot help but read how he expressed himself and conclude that his willingness to say "good riddance" at the thought that his daughter would have to serve at all is morally disordered. He did not say if my daughter is sent to the infantry, I'll get her out and flee to Canada. Rather, he left the matter to the point that even if she were drafted to be a radar tech on a ship, he'd run and say to hell with our country. Heck, if his daughter we drafted to be a drone operator who does a 12 hour work day on a base in the Midwest, we can expect him to flee.

The draft is not intrinsically immoral, even for women. If the US military were to lose a significant percentage of its medical staff in a war, the federal government could licitly issue draft orders for civilian medical workers including women. It would not even intrinsically immoral to draft nurses and put them out on the front lines as combat medics if not enough men could be trained in time.

Nobody is going to simultaneously rule that women have to be allowed in combat while taking all of that away with the other hand by imposing physical standards that will take all women except mutant aliens not only out of combat but also out of the majority of support roles.

Nobody is going to actually pass a bill at all that formally declares that women are equal, but not equal when it comes to duties. The reason the debates should be so jarring to you is that the only man who agrees with you is in third place and losing steam. He was the lone voice who agreed with you at all. What that says is that you are likely to face a Republican President who will veto such a bill even if it passes both houses of Congress.

I am cynical that anything will stop this progression except seeing the policy implemented a bunch of women come home in pieces (physically and mentally) after being sent to fight an enemy like ISIS, Russia or Iran.

WRT his Walsh, women and violence, it's also a good idea to understand his definition of chivalry. Even a former contributor here said something quite similar:

Clearly, if your very life is truly in jeopardy, you are not called to prostrate yourself before her and die in the name of chivalry. But I can’t conceive of a situation where you would need to punch a woman in order to save your own life.

Conservatives often suffer from an opposite vice which is refusing to recognize the natural limits of gender differences. Going hard in the opposite direction of radical egalitarianism leads hard away from the truth as well. Ironically, the one thing that Walsh and a radical feminist could probably agree on is that if a woman is trying to commit a violent felony against a man, he has no business knocking her lights out.

That is why I am often quick to criticize conservatives on these issues.

Heck, if his daughter we drafted to be a drone operator who does a 12 hour work day on a base in the Midwest, we can expect him to flee.

If his daughter is a married woman with children, and if he, she, and her family could get away with it and make a decent life elsewhere, together, that might not be a bad idea. Remember, the female draft has a whole lot more to it than just the specific duties that you are doing. As it would be and will be carried out, it is part of an overall leveling system that treats women as cogs in the machine interchangeable with men, as having no more connection to home, hearth, and children than do men. It is an ultimate expression of that androgynizing attack on the family that totalitarians have always dreamed of. Seen in that context, the mere fact that the woman you love isn't being sent into the infantry is not the only issue.

Now, admittedly, I'm a rule-follower and something of a wimp, and I doubt that fleeing is going to be much of an option anymore for anybody, however bad the demands of our Overmasters may get. It may be necessary to make the best of a bad situation. But let's not fool ourselves: The draft is an attack upon whatever is left of femininity, for all women, traditionalist or not, regardless of the *specific* duties for the sake of which they are conscripted.

If his daughter is a married woman with children, and if he, she, and her family could get away with it and make a decent life elsewhere, together, that might not be a bad idea.

I would agree to that. However, the problematic area remains childless women. Our society remains enthralled to liberalism, so in the long run I don't see patching the system with unprincipled exceptions as likely to help rather than keep the system running until it catastrophically collapses.

The issues I have with guys like Matt and other "chivalric" socons are that they are liberals who proudly embrace a perverted form of chivalry and a radical, almost gender feminist level insane notion of gender differences. I don't see their worldview as fundamentally rooted in reality except to the extent it bears a passing similarity by mere acknowledgement of gender differences.

On the other hand, there is at least one plausible scenario where a draft of women is warranted. The federal government can draft specific skill sets when there is a crisis. If a large percentage of the military's medical personnel were killed in a war, it would be reasonable for the military to draft enough civilians it needed to replace them. Drafting thousands of women to serve as nurses or combat medics would be reasonable policy because the overwhelming majority of trained civilians are female. That is one area where I'd say to Walsh that the needs of the republic come before his personal desires.

Mike, we are sufficiently informed of your disdain for men who are, in your view, over-chivalrous or pervertedly chivalrous or chivalrous-in-a-way-that-you-call-feminist, or whatever. I don't think you need repeat it for a third and fourth time. It's not as though, as far as I know, anyone here plans to get involved with you in a blow-by-blow debate about what _precise_ views of male-female relationships constitute the _right_ kind of chivalry and non-liberalism. I'm certainly not going to, and I hope no one else will try, either.

Last night on Fox News, a Rubio supporter asked Cruz a pointed question about whether or not women have the same debt of obligation as men to their country. I don't think it would be unfair to characterize her position as mainstream among that faction of Republicans. I don't remember Cruz's exact response, but he gave a few examples of why the draft would be bad and seemed to leave the door open to women in war zones if they're volunteers (combat arms was something he didn't directly address).

What was most telling was when Cruz pointed out that Rubio betrayed his own position in the previous debate by working to pass Mike Lee's bill. Not a shock to anyone who has been paying attention to Rubio's actions rather than fawning over him as the Cuban second coming of JFK, but still.

My observation is that there seem to be the following clusters of opinion on the right:

1. Women have an equal duty of obligation as men. That seems to be the Rubio camp.
2. Women have an equal right to volunteer, but the draft for women is too dangerous for military operations (Cruz).
3. Women should not be in the majority of the military occupations because they are men's work and women have a proper role to play at home. (The more or less Christian patriarchal position)
4. Women are special, delicate flowers and no manly man would ever countenance the thought of letting a woman risk injury when he could risk it for her. (Also known as the Mark Driscoll, Matt Walsh, Matt Chandler and other white knights' position)

We have one candidate in faction 2 and no candidate in faction 3.

I think Cruz would do a good job of holding back the march and even rolling some of it back, but the signs are that we cannot get even a 5% candidate who adheres to #3.

I find your psychologizing of all of the people in your #4 to be supremely boring. (And don't get me wrong; I dislike Mark Driscoll for other reasons as much as anyone.) Surely there is something more profitable you could do with your time, Mike T., than spend it guessing that other people are "unorthodox" on gender roles according to you and, on the basis of weak evidence, attributing extreme, silly-sounding positions to them. Surely.

In my threads, the coded use of the phrase "white knight" as a sneer is severely frowned upon. There is something seriously messed-up about any social group in which that phrase is used in that way. Don't do it again in my threads. Remember that I do not care about your opinion of me and that I am well aware that it is only constant monitoring that keeps you from saying still more objectionable things in comments here. While I am not sure that keeping you around as a commentator is worth that amount of trouble, as long as you _are_ a commentator, I am not going to leave anyone under the misimpression that the rhetoric of the other parts of the blogosphere that you attempt to bring here is welcome here. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Let me be explicit. For purposes of this topic, I DON'T CARE. I don't _need_ society to "fundamentally dissent from the values of liberalism."

You need society to repent from liberalism. You want a tame liberalism where you can have the right amount of freedom and equality, but not the version of freedom and equality someone else wants. That's what this comes down to in the end.

If I wanted to be preached at about the alleged need to repent of my remaining liberalism and the requirement to get all of society to repent of its liberalism rather than pushing "unprincipled exceptions," I would spend my time reading and commenting at a different blog. In any event, getting into _that_ larger morass would definitely be OT for this thread.

When someone tells you that all of these bills are unprincipled exceptions to the values their very own sponsors ordinarily embrace, and therefore in time will be struck down that is not OT. That is just something you don't want to read because it's depressing.

I'm actually rather pleased that Rubio was inconsistent with his previous comments and supported Mike Lee's bill. Now I just wish I could get some law geek to explain to me exactly what's in the bill that's supposed to stop the SCOTUS from getting involved, and what its prospects are.

It's also typical of your crazy ideas to suggest court martialing men who act chivalrously in battle. I won't even dignify it with a long response.

That's not chivalry in any sense that actual chevaliers would recognize it, and I think you know that.

Well, sure, you can claim anything you want about "actual chevaliers" because they never had to deal with the problem so there is no way to disprove your claim - or prove it.

Oh, wait, there WAS an instance. Good ol' Joan of Arc. But she disproves your claim: the chevaliers (once they could stand the idea of Joan at the battlefield at all) did actually do the chivalrous thing in her regard.

If you have two 80th percentile scorers, one male and one female, and one combat arms and one support position, to assign between them what would you pick? You'd put the man in combat arms because you don't need him in that support position. .... and "let men do what they do best" while keeping things segregated by gender as much as possible.

Which would be an obviously illegal act, going by the liberal standards of finding discrimination in any unequal outcomes. A lawsuit (by men or women) showing that more women than men were in the support positions would be proof of illegal discrimination.

3. Women should not be in the majority of the military occupations because they are men's work and women have a proper role to play at home. (The more or less Christian patriarchal position)

You will not be able to locate a single Christian patriarchal society before the 20th century who chose to place women in the military in any position at all, and so the qualifier "in the majority" in your comment is completely out of place. Historically the expression would have been "Women should not be in the military." Much cleaner and simpler. THEY didn't need to quibble about it with "in the majority" and "occupations".

By the way, I want to clear something up about how we started here. I was not making comments about what SHOULD be done, but addressing how these proposals interact with liberalism and how politicians that fully embrace liberalism would react to them.

What's this "we" business? Lydia set out to identify what SHOULD be done, and you decided to attack because that didn't address "how these proposals interact..." But thank you for at least clarifying that your attack was at a different target than Lydia's point.

So if you want minimize the damage, you have to outwit liberalism at its own game.

You need society to repent from liberalism.

When someone tells you that all of these bills are unprincipled exceptions to the values their very own sponsors ordinarily embrace, and therefore in time will be struck down that is not OT.

Mike, please recall the difference between tactics and goals. We can be morally certain of sound goals with considerable ease: goals that accord with right reason and the nature of man, for example. We cannot, in complex political matters, be morally certain of optimal tactics with equal ease: many agents, mixed motivations, outside influences, all make for lesser kinds of certainty. You are insisting, here, with the kind of language that OUGHT to be reserved for patently obvious moral certainty, that the tactics Lydia suggested not only cannot work to achieve the LIMITED (short term) objective of the specific maneuver, but are also inherently incompatible with achieving overall success in the larger long-range goal (let's call that: defeating liberalism). But that's ridiculous. It isn't inherently incompatible, at absolute worst all that could be said is that this tactic might make the rest of the battle more difficult in some ways. And even that cannot be established as a moral certainty, that's not the kind of situation we have.

Also, Lydia did not say that achieving the overall long range goal would be limited to using just that one tactic and nothing else. She offered one tactic for one maneuver for one single battle in the world-wide war, and you jump all over her because THAT alone won't win the war? She didn't remotely suggest that prosecuting the entire war consisted of using this one small tactic. And for you to imply by your intemperate language that ONLY your set of tactics and no others could possibly achieve the (difficult, complex, many years away) long range goal, and that failing to see that clearly is effectively the same as being a liberal, is just absurd.

I'm actually rather pleased that Rubio was inconsistent with his previous comments and supported Mike Lee's bill.

It's a case where he got it right, but it should be a signal to his supporters that the man is literally just a less competent, less alpha version of Trump. He can't wait to say one thing and do its complete opposite. Good on him that he actually did the right thing, but on the matter of SCOTUS appointments, you can expect him to appoint a Kennedy or worse.

Oh, wait, there WAS an instance. Good ol' Joan of Arc. But she disproves your claim: the chevaliers (once they could stand the idea of Joan at the battlefield at all) did actually do the chivalrous thing in her regard.

An instance, and by your own admission, it took a great deal of effort on her part to prove she was worthy of their respect and not a rebellious woman who was trying to usurp the military role of men. In other words, she is by definition a "special snowflake" among women in any armed forces. Furthermore, unlike any of the women in the military today, she claimed a sort of prophetic calling and her success actually gave men reason to believe that maybe she was telling the truth and God was calling her to war.

Now what does that have to do with a feminist, grrrrl power American girl signing up and forcing the military to find a way to get into the armed forces, let alone combat arms? Nothing at all. That is why I suggested that the chivalrous thing to do is throw those men to the wolves because they are neither ladies nor Joans of Arc, they are rebellious women who have no respect whatsoever for men, male vocations and things of that nature to the extent that they are willing to imperil good men to make a political point.

So let them fight as though we demand they act fungibly with men. They say they can, so let's demand they live up to their own demands. I guarantee you, after one campaign where we do that, you'll see the left grow cold to the idea of women (except nurses and doctors) anywhere near a war zone.

Which would be an obviously illegal act, going by the liberal standards of finding discrimination in any unequal outcomes. A lawsuit (by men or women) showing that more women than men were in the support positions would be proof of illegal discrimination.

It would not be anywhere near as "obviously illegal" as a bill that sets a formal "some are more equal than others" standard in place. Furthermore, you will find a lot of liberals will agree that keeping the standards high to make sure the men aren't skating is more important than getting a lot of women in because most liberals don't like dying in war needlessly.

You are insisting, here, with the kind of language that OUGHT to be reserved for patently obvious moral certainty, that the tactics Lydia suggested not only cannot work to achieve the LIMITED (short term) objective of the specific maneuver, but are also inherently incompatible with achieving overall success in the larger long-range goal

These bills would get challenged very quickly and almost certainly found unconstitutional. I also don't believe I ever said that a bill formally creating a double standard is incompatible with that long term goal. It just won't achieve it because society rejects the long term goal at this point.

Conservatives are often deeply uncomfortable with telling women "no" on these issues. Many of them don't even believe they should because they agree that there exists no such thing as a male vocation. If they conceded that such things exist, then any woman who demands to be part of it would be guilty of a transgression, if not a sin, depending on the context. A majority also believe that women have a right to choose any vocation, but they just shouldn't choose certain ones.

Therein is the problem with many rightists in the US. If you believe that women have a right to choose those traditionally male vocations, the distance is not that great to saying they may be compelled to choose them if society needs it. That's why it's natural for Rubio and Bush to go back and forth on the draft. They know they should be telling women not just no, but hell no, but their prior commitments to liberal values prevent them from saying what those women want is wrong.

On the other hand, if they could bring themselves to that point, they could fully articulate why the female draft is wrong though they'd lose 90% of their own supporters.

These bills would get challenged very quickly and almost certainly found unconstitutional.

Okay, no, _not_ "almost certainly." I speak here both as a long-standing con-law geek and as a long-standing watcher of *this very issue* in the courts.

First, a bill dropping the draft altogether (one of the ones I discussed in the main post) would not likely be declared unconstitutional *at all*. That's its strategic and legal virtue.

Second, a bill taking women out of combat by Congress (which is not on the table but which I suggest) would be completely in line with earlier precedents and constitutional by earlier precedents.

Third, Mike Lee's bill at least purports to contain language stripping the SCOTUS of jurisdiction (this is the best interpretation I can put on the news stories), so the only real question there (as far as I can tell) is whether jurisdiction stripping would work. It's not exactly an option that has been tried and found wanting, because it hasn't been tried that often. As far as a brief googling shows, the SCOTUS has usually or always followed it when it was properly written into a law and when SCOTUS did not have "original jurisdiction" (where it does not apply). So the question appears to be whether Lee's bill properly jumps through the hoops, the answer to which is not "almost certainly" no.

One thing that immediately came to my mind for those who support the drafting of women: You're basically pushing "equality" to the next logical step brought on by feminism. So in other words, you let modern day feminism and modern day logic win.

@ Mike T: "So how do they say to their sons, "boys, girls are your equals, but it's only natural in God's plan that your sisters get to stay home, make money, hang out at Starbucks, vote and run for office while you are getting shot at in a warzone against your preferences."

A) Girls can actually join the military. We're talking about conscription here, Mike. Conscription.
B) When I turned 18, got the selective service notification in the mail, I did not ask myself "Why do men get drafted and not women? This is pure BS!" I agreed to whatever fate I'd end with if I were drafted. Seeing a female get ripped to shreds by an enemy sniper? That's pure disgusting.
C) Men and women aren't equal.

Under liberalism (and I mean that in the expansive sense of all modernist thinking), they are. The vast majority of conservatives are just right-liberals and believe in gender equality for one reason or another. That is one of the reasons they don't twist their daughters' arms until they don't go into the military, law enforcement and other traditionally male vocations in which women tend to get "ripped to shreds" in a conflict.

Furthermore, there is some natural recoiling at the thought that if men and women are equals, why should your boys have to be put at risk of being maimed or killed while your daughters have literally no duty to national service of any kind? It is patently obvious that giving two groups equal rights, but making one have significantly costlier duties than the other is not actual equality, but making the one with the duties a subtly second class citizen.

A lot of the conservative recoiling is not based in an authentic embrace of gender roles, but in a realization that the equality they ordinarily embrace has a dark side. Ask yourself this. Would you ever tell your daughter that there is such a thing as a "man's vocation" to which she has no moral right to force herself to be accepted? Most conservatives would not, and thus they implicitly declare that in ordinary situations men and women are fungible. It is only a hop and skip from that position to demanding conscription.

When you get down to it, the only logical position against the female draft is that military service is ordinarily a man's vocation. Unfortunately, all of the candidates, even Cruz, reject that proposition. I like Cruz and would happily support him without reservation, but would do so knowing that the man is not going to really "get it" on the issue.

In my county, we just had a few cops get ambushed and the only one that was shot and that died was the female cop. I can't help but shake my head in the absence of knowledge about where she was shot and with what caliber and conclude that chances are if she'd been a typical male she'd be in the ICU, not 6 feet under.

I see a lot of kvetching from conservatives who simultaneously want equality and freedom, want their daughters to feel unhindered to choose whatever path might make them feel happy, but also want a traditional culture (to be freely chosen). Her father was a cop as well from what I gather (law enforcement family, so it's a safe assumption). Where was her father? The picture of her, she's not a big woman, but of average build which is already poorly suited against even an underweight male.

Her father probably didn't want to tell his daughter it was not right for her. He almost certainly didn't want to be called a sexist, even though as a cop himself he probably knew from first hand experience that his daughter would probably retire as much by the grace of God as by her own competence due to the physical capability delta that disfavored her. Had he been a "sexist," she might still be alive. She might have rebelled and become a cop anyway, but then she might have at least grudgingly taken a safer path for which she was better prepared.

This is what liberalism looks like. This is what rejecting the notion that some vocations are naturally the vocation of one gender or the other results in. This is the price of saying you want your son or daughter to always follow their dreams, even if their dream is tantamount to anything from killing their appeal to the opposite sex (like your son declaring he wants to be a house husband) to a high risk of rape or death (being a female cop in a bad part of town or in a war zone).

The phrase "equal rights" is nebulous. I generally don't use it just _because_ it is too nebulous, and I'm by nature a splitter to the nth degree. So I would never say that I "support equal rights" for men and women. However, there are almost certainly _some_ places (I'd rather not list them) where I would support _some_ degrees of equality of positive rights between men and women in law that Mike T. would not agree with. I say this having read his comments here and elsewhere for many years. No doubt that (and other things) make me a "right liberal" in his view and in the view of those from whom he got the phrase and the taxonomy.

But at the same time, I'm glad to say that I have absolutely no need to "twist the arms" of my daughters to prevent them from wanting to join the military, the police force, or the fire brigade. I simply taught them about all that stuff from earliest youth upwards, taught them that feminism is wrong about it, and now a fairly robust notion of male-female differences, including differences in natural life work, is part of the furniture of their minds. Of course, they are free beings and in some distant possible world could change their minds about it later on as adults. But I don't really expect that.

I say this having read his comments here and elsewhere for many years. No doubt that (and other things) make me a "right liberal" in his view and in the view of those from whom he got the phrase and the taxonomy.

My view of liberalism is not as harsh as certain others' view of it. I actually have a degree of sympathy for it for a variety of reasons that are OT here.

I simply taught them about all that stuff from earliest youth upwards, taught them that feminism is wrong about it, and now a fairly robust notion of male-female differences, including differences in natural life work, is part of the furniture of their minds. Of course, they are free beings and in some distant possible world could change their minds about it later on as adults.

And that is why they probably won't change their views later in life. They were taught it from the beginning by a mother who would not approve of her daughter saying it is better to join the military than get married and have kids. Women today are often unlucky enough to have parents who would rather not rock the boat on social expectations than teach their daughters certain hard truths.

If most of society actually felt the way you do, your daughters would be free to change their minds but not free to put that into effect. Society would rejecting them joining the military or law enforcement except as something like a nurse. Whereas today, if they change their minds society must bend over backward to accommodate them.

The phrase "equal rights" is nebulous. I generally don't use it just _because_ it is too nebulous, and I'm by nature a splitter to the nth degree. So I would never say that I "support equal rights" for men and women.

When as a platitude, errr, principle, most of society does support it and support it enthusiastically. That includes, at very degrees of enthusiasm, all of the Republican candidates.

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